


Spark

by SharpestRose



Category: X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-06
Updated: 2011-07-06
Packaged: 2017-10-21 02:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marie finds John holed up in a large house in a small suburb, the kind where everyone's too polite to pay attention to anyone else's business.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spark

In the fourth week, on the Friday, Marie wakes up with the sensitive skin on the soft inside of her forearm, the stretch from wrist to elbow-hinge, across the bareness of Bobby's back. The texture of body against body is still novel enough that it takes her almost ten seconds to realise he's dead.

In the eighth week, when she's lost track of the days, Marie finds John holed up in a large house in a small suburb, the kind where everyone's too polite to pay attention to anyone else's business.

He's not at home when she gets there, so she sits on the step to wait. She's in no hurry. Not anymore. Every second drags like a fingernail, caught in the synthetic weave of a glove.

It's dark, and late, when he appears beside her. There's alcohol on his breath and something loose and sparking in his face. The same thing she's seen in her own eyes in those rare times when she forgets to avoid a mirror. The where-now-what-now- _who-am-I-oh-God-please-I-didn't-want- **this**_.

"How're you paying for this?" she asks, sturdying herself against the front door's frame as she rises. She doesn't look for a hand up, and he doesn't offer one.

"There's bank accounts nobody found," he answers. "Are you coming in?"

"Is that an invitation?"

"Do you need one?" His mouth makes the same smirk-shape, but it's a hard and ugly thing now. Marie wonders how Storm can possibly believe in mutants remaining mutants no matter what the cost. Even the smallest costs seem far too high.

His house is empty and still and cold. As metaphors go, it's not subtle, but Marie's life stopped being subtle years ago. There's a haphazard pile of papers and books and scribbled-on legal pads strewn across the table; an oasis of chaos in the maid-tended calm.

"Are you back at school?" she asks, gesturing to the heap.

"Nah." John plucks a thin, cheap-looking paperback from among the sheafs. "I'm writing fuckbooks."

She just looks at him. The answer's so absurd she can't help but believe it.

"It keeps me occupied," he explains. The defensiveness he used to fight the world with has tempered into something else. Something that makes her think, of all people, of Logan. "The money's not bad. Not enough to keep me in a place like this, but that's not a problem yet."

She used to read books like the one in his hand, though she never called them by the name he used. They were romance novels, or erotica, or a guilty indulgence. Something beautiful and delicate. She'd wanted... oh, she'd _wanted_... and the books had been all she could have.

Her eyelids close, pushing the sting out over her lashes.

When she risks looking up again, hoping the darkness of the room will hide the sheen, he's staring at her. Reaching over, he flicks on the overhead light, and she flinches a little at the sudden brightness.

"You look like shit."

"He's dead, John."

He sways on his feet, just a little, and steadies himself against the edge of the table. They're standing close enough together that she can smell him. Her sense of smell's been good ever since she took a little bit of Logan.

"Was it the cure?" he asks, swallowing as if his mouth's gone dry. There's a tiny scar on his cheekbone, and Marie thinks it might be where Bobby's forehead hit him the last time the two of them met. She only heard about it second-hand, but the scar is new, and she hopes that's where it came from. At least one of them should keep a mark of him.

"It was me," she answers.

John shakes his head, turning now to pace across the smooth floor. His voice bounces from the bare walls, the echo muted by the design of the room. "It wore off?"

Few words have ever been as difficult to say. "Yes."

" _Fuck._ "

The punch is violent and unexpected, and Marie jumps in surprise as John's fist connects with the wall.

"He didn't... he was asleep. When it happened," she stammers. "He probably didn't even -"

"Who the hell cares? What the fuck does it matter? He's dead because you bought into pathetic norm bullshit." The rawness in the words makes her tears rise again. She can't look at the expression on his face.

"Don't do that. Don't spout that crap at me. Not now!" The shout feels better than the crying. "Don't pretend you weren't disgusted by it when I touched you at his house."

"It doesn't matter! It's still who you are!" Now they're both yelling. It's probably the most noise the street has had in years. "The personal's not as important as the political, Rogue, and -"

Her teeth grit so hard her jaw hurts. "Marie."

" _Rogue_ ," he repeats. The movement is too unexpected and too fast for her to dodge away from, and then his palm -- clammy, hot, and somehow she'd forgotten how hot he always was -- is pressed inelegantly against her cheek, it's as good as it always is, the same rush, better than anything else is the world could ever possibly feel. Even sex didn't get her this close to someone. She sucks it in like water into drowning lungs.

John pulls his hand away, his face all pinched and heroin-chic now with the shadows and the fear she knows better than her own names. "Rogue," he repeats on a panting breath.

"Nobody ever asked me!" she says, and wonders how much of the anger in her now is taken from him. "So what if they wanted me to be ordinary and boring when I wasn't? Magneto wanted to make me Joan of fucking Mutant-Arc. He was, Bobby was the only one who never made a decision on my behalf. I've got no loyalty to your fucking mutant cause, John. It's never done me any good."

"And going sapien, that was just cherries and roses, wasn't it?"

She punches him hard in the jaw, a wordless cry in her mouth, and then her knees give out and she's sobbing and he's holding her up. "It's not fair. It's not fair. I never wanted this. I just wanted to be normal."

His hand strokes her hair, booze-sweet breath near her ear. "Oh, baby, that's where you went wrong. You don't get a choice."


End file.
